Thin oxide layers are commonly used as dielectric layers at a surface of an integrated circuit. This is in part because of good electrical properties of the oxide layers, including high electron mobility and low electron trap densities.
Low pressure radical oxidation (LPRO) of substrates is a known method for reliably forming oxide layers with excellent electrical properties. Further, LPRO provides excellent non-selectivity of the oxide growth among planar and irregular substrate surfaces. However, LPRO requires high processing temperatures in order to provide practical oxidation rates for device manufacturing. As circuit geometries shrink to ever smaller feature sizes and new materials are introduced into semiconductor devices, the thermal budget of many manufacturing processes is reduced. Thus, despite its benefits, LPRO processes have not been utilized in the manufacturing of low feature size devices, or other processes requiring low thermal budget.